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A Unique Tractor Club

The Ferguson Club is a unique tractor club that was established in 1986 to promote the inventions, in particular the ‘Ferguson System’ of the late Irishman, Harry Ferguson. The Ferguson System is a hydraulic, automatic control system that is used for attaching ploughs and other implements to agricultural tractors and is used by almost all tractor manufacturers worldwide. Today, thousands of members come together through the Ferguson Club to exchange information and share views on the life and revolutionary achievements of Harry Ferguson.

The Challenge - Before LoveAdmin

Jo Pickering, the Ferguson Club’s Vice Chairman, originally came on board as Membership Secretary 14 years ago. Back then, the club had around 1200 members, and Jo was pre-warned that if they exceeded 1400 members, one person alone couldn’t manage the membership admin. 3 years ago, the club also enabled online registrations which meant a very rapid increase of new members in a short space of time – they had 700 new members join last year alone. Whilst this was great news, it also meant a great deal of membership admin behind the scenes.

When people registered online, Jo had to print their details off and manually input this into a desktop-based database management software. This became a really time-consuming job, and Jo was spending up to 3 days a week on membership admin which wasn't ideal for anyone, particularly, a volunteer at the age of retirement. Jo bought on another Membership Secretary, Lynn Turner, however, she quickly realised that even extra help, their membership admin was taking over. That's when they made the decision to grab the bull by its horns and go cloud-based.

When attending the Classic Motor Show last year, the club’s Website Co-ordinator, Gary Anderson approached the LoveAdmin team, expressing his concern about their membership admin. After an encouraging conversation, Gary spread the positive word of LoveAdmin to Jo. She investigated and compared LoveAdmin to 5 other online membership management systems and in the end circled back to LoveAdmin which she has “no regrets” about.

The Solution - After LoveAdmin

LoveAdmin has automated and transformed the registration and membership management process for the Ferguson Club. Not only has it saved them hours of time on membership admin, but it’s made it quick and easy for people to register and adds them automatically into a database. People can now register at any time of the day without disrupting Jo’s daily life, and she doesn’t have to worry about printing confirmation letters, putting them in envelopes, and stamping them, as LoveAdmin automatically triggers welcome emails to new members as they register.

As for payments, these were previously taken via various different means such as cash, card readers at shows, standing orders, and cheques. While many of their older members still pay by cheque, LoveAdmin has given everyone the option to pay online, which has reduced manual payments to some degree.

Although the Ferguson Club has experienced brilliant success with LoveAdmin so far, they’ve only just touched the surface of its capabilities. In the future, Jo and Lynn plan to use the payment reconciliation and events management features, as well as group emails for renewals and payment reminders as this will enable them to become more profitable by picking up non-paying members. The club also has area reps all over the UK, so instead them reaching out to Jo for bits and pieces of information, Jo will be able to give them all controlled access to LoveAdmin. This way, they’ll be able to see whatever they need, wherever they are from one single online place.

Jo says, “Since I’ve retired, the Ferguson Club has gone crazy numbers-wise, and membership admin ended up taking more of my retirement time than I wanted. People were calling me to register before I got out of bed in the morning or at half 10 on a Sunday evening. I wanted to break down the interruptions to my peaceful retirement, and LoveAdmin has done exactly that.”

“Before Love Admin, the workload was taking up far too much time. Our old system worked well but was not time efficient. I knew I couldn’t hand it over to Lynn in its old state because it would be unfair. Also, as Love Admin is cloud-based, the work can be shared by multiple administrators. We are expecting to save a lot of time and work at renewal time.”